IMHO...
Besides Sound United just being sold, is that they have
too many loudspeaker brands..
One can see even with (2) electronic brands, they are having difficulty positioning them strategically....
Today the CE marketplace besides Best Buy, has fewer sellers and is dominated by internet sellers who sell mainly on price. So the only other distribution channel options are the Custom AV Install specialist or the higher-end esoteric component guys that sell $2K AC cables....
Just my $0.02...
Let me translate that for you. They can not sell the products they have and can only make money by fraud. Why is this and what is the solution?
The solution is partnerships. The partnerships need to be broad.
There are too many products, especially speakers and most not very good.
The other issue is complexity. Members here are an elite tech savvy group. Most of the public, especially most potential customers have no clue how to connect modern equipment up. They often search and pay high prices for vintage gear as id you connect A to B and switch it on, it works, with no GUI fussing.
The arts are trying valiantly to produce high quality AV streams, but their potential customers have no clue how to get the stream except on an iPhone, iPad or computer speakers.
So manufacturers need to partner with arts organizations, retailers, installers architects and builders. This now requires everyone on board. That also involves getting involved with certification of all parts of the chain. That means partnership with organizations like CEDIA.
The obsolescence issue also needs to be solved. Gene on a YouTube video was talking about people selecting speakers for life, and I agree. Electronics needs to be modular, upgradable and easily serviceable, preferably onsite. So people need to able to choose their electronics for life. Reliability needs to improve enormously.
Peter Walker of Quad was always a visionary. His last preamp, the Quad 44 was modular. After his death no one had the wit to produce updated modules. This brings us to another point there needs to be far greater standardization, so that you can have a power supply rack and slot in units for the functions you need, easily, and keep your equipment current instead of regular trips to the recycling center and polluting the world, throwing out badly designed black boxes inappropriately stuffed with inaccessible circuit boards. Design currently is just awful
Things need to change radically, and that would increase income for all with a stake in the game form artist to vendor, designer, builder, installer. The end result would then be a huge increase in the quality of life for many. What we have at the moment is complex mayhem excluding the many from the benefits this technology can and should provide.